Dre Kirkpatrick is close to making his debut

The Bengals secondary has gotten healthier in the last couple of weeks, but they still haven’t been able to see what first-round pick Dre Kirkpatrick can do in a game.

Kirkpatrick hurt his knee before training camp and then aggravated the injury in camp. That left him with just about a week of practice before the start of the season, something he started remedying last week. He’s been a full participant in practice each of the last two days and coach Marvin Lewis sounds optimistic about where Kirkpatrick is at the moment.

“He had a good week,” said Lewis, via Joe Reedy of the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Everybody else gets two weeks of training camp and then four preseason games and then they’re ready to play in a game. He’s had about two and a half weeks of good work. It’s part of the process to get through. He has no problems, no symptoms. He’s competing and taking a lot of snaps both with the starting group and against our offense. He’s getting work on both sides.”

Lewis said that Kirkpatrick could play on Sunday against the Browns and the rookie is listed as questionable. Reedy, citing the original timeline given when Kirkpatrick returned to practice, thinks it is more likely that his debut will be back until after the Bengals’ bye in Week Eight. It doesn’t seem like too much longer before Kirkpatrick will be on the field, something that could be a boost to the team’s defense in the second half of the year.

The key word here is “could”, the thing about draft picks is that you don’t know if they’re even good enough to play in the NFL. On top of that, it was reported that he had never learned the art of backpedaling in College. It’s one thing to plug in and play a first round Guard, Running Back, Linebacker, etc. but Corner is a VERY, VERY, FAST part of the game. We all know the speed of the NFL is light years faster than even the SEC. It’s a hit or miss with draft picks, so unless he proves to be an undisputed upgrade over what we already have, I don’t see a reason for throwing him in the game, even after the bye week.

voyager6 says:Oct 12, 2012 7:34 PM

Best case is he is put in to the game in nickel situations to cover a specific receiver for a few games, just to get his feet wet. Dre won’t start at CB until the Bengals are out of the playoff race, as Marvin won’t take the chance his rookie CB could lose a game and tank the season for them.

Marvin Lewis is known to let more-talented players sit, instead playing veterans that he is comfortable with. See Pat Sims. John Thornton has repeatedly told the story that he had to tell Marvin to play Sims as Sims was clearly better than he was. You can argue that Burfict starting is counter, but there were no other choices to fix the LBs after the defense didn’t show up the first two games.